


& mistake these walls for skin

by Not_A_Valid_Opinion



Series: The Most Beautiful Part Of Your Body Is Where It's Headed [2]
Category: Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: Beetlejuice Has Mood Ring Hair (Beetlejuice), Beetlejuice is colorblind, Beetlejuice is maitlandsexual, Consent Issues, Gen, Mild Blood, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Nobody knows what they're doing, Slow Burn, alex brightman would have wanted this and so would dewey finn, beej is emotionally defensive There i said it, beetlejuice SINGS okay, charles and delia are mentioned, he tends to run away from his problems when he thinks theyre unsolvable, im ace i do what i can, jazz hands for this next tag okay, no beta ever i just key smash and post, not explicit no porn or anything, references to first fic in this series but its not a necessary read, sorta - Freeform, the maitlands are just the best guys okay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:15:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25776502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Not_A_Valid_Opinion/pseuds/Not_A_Valid_Opinion
Summary: The Maitlands invite Beetlejuice over to paint each other's nails.
Relationships: Beetlejuice & Adam Maitland & Barbara Maitland, Beetlejuice/Adam Maitland/Barbara Maitland
Series: The Most Beautiful Part Of Your Body Is Where It's Headed [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1815964
Comments: 8
Kudos: 87





	& mistake these walls for skin

**Author's Note:**

> sorry for the wait life comes at you fast. this will either have two or three chapters? not too sure just yet.

It’s weird, for sure. If you asked any member of the household, seemingly growing by the second, they’d all pick  _ weird _ or  _ odd  _ or  _ strange  _ to describe the circumstances in which a demon, two married ghosts, a stepmother, a father, and a daughter all began to live (or, due to technicalities,  _ subside)  _ under the same household.

Beetlejuice would call it ‘weird’ only after ‘suspicious’ fell off his tongue. For him, it was a mixture of unfair, un-demon-y feelings, an exposure of the self to  _ why the hell should I forgive them, Lydia abandoned me then killed me, fuck her, fuck them, fuck them all  _ and  _ I miss her, I’m lonely as shit, I’m back where I started, and it’s all my fault.  _

__ God/Satan, was he ever fucking lonely. 

He’d wanted to make it up to Lydia by enough of a degree that he’d made the effort to avoid her entirely. This extended, by default, to her family- now expanded thanks to his own meddling, though he knew she’d never quite credit him for that- but he knew when to cut his losses. They all hated him, and he couldn’t even blame them. Not that they were out of the clear, but his say in it didn’t amount to much when they were the ones to make the final elective decision that he needed to leave them be forever. He was supposed to be giving them the breadth of width, here, after everything that happened. He’d move on, wander about, fuck around, maybe try again in a few hundred years with a new batch of breathers once Lydia was dead and there was nothing tying him back to her. Him dying by her hands, in her house- it left a sort of longing within him, a pang to both return to the scene and get away as fast as he could, go as far away as he could. 

But, hell. Shit happened. Lydia didn’t quite forgive him, he didn’t quite expect her to nor return the sentiment himself. But he’d tried, and, well. 

She did, too. 

Suspicious. Incredibly, really, but he’d played along because he found he didn’t care. So what if they wanted him for a reason other than his attractive features or supernatural abilities; as long as someone was talking to him again, he’d bend over backwards to do what it took to keep that. 

So, the Deetz-Maitland household was open to him. At a cost, of course. 

Rules were set- admittedly, fair ones, though disagreements did tend to happen. The list was stuck up on the fridge with a magnet shaped like a bat, there for all to see, for all to read, and for all to abide by. 

Weird. Especially for a demon- abiding by rules? Not usually his thing. But, see, he’d had time to adjust, and good reason to. It had been around four months, now, of Beetlejuice worming his way back into the family dynamic. 

(It took only hours, actually, for him and Lydia to make up with snivelling and whining and gently slapping one another until each had said their part. Beetlejuice wasn’t big on forgiving people who fucked him over, least of all himself, but when Lydia crumpled into his arms, so small and anything but fragile- well. She’s the only person who’d ever truly hugged him before. It felt… meaningful. 

He wouldn’t let this go (let  _ her  _ go). Not again.)

It started small- Beetlejuice wasn’t usually allowed to stay the night, and was only allowed over if he was invited. ‘Invited’ as in  _ not summoned-  _ that was banned by everyone in the house. They didn’t trust him enough. Fine, fine, he deserved that. It sucked, a lot, but he couldn’t take back his actions (nor would he) and he can’t change how they feel about them. Instead, Delia handed him a burner phone she just  _ happened  _ to have tucked inside a little box in her and Charles’ closet, showed him how to use it, and from there Lydia called him over whenever she had a free night and wanted a demon to make it interesting. 

‘Interesting’ meant pulling some pranks on her dad, who was putting up with him only on account of the fact that Lydia was smiling. It also meant watching Buzzfeed Unsolved marathons with the kid at the foot of her bed until she falls asleep, hanging over the edge, and he has to figure out how to make Youtube stop autoplaying, which he can’t because he can’t touch the laptop it was playing on unless he was summoned, and mainly involved him getting Delia out of bed and making her quietly do it for him. It involved helping Lydia with her history homework because sometimes he’d actually been where the question was asking about when it was asking about it. 

Mostly, though, it was a lot of hanging around Lydia, avoiding the living room, bugging the Deetzs, and avoiding the Maitlands. 

Beetlejuice wanted more. That was always the thing with him- he never had a lot, and he knew he  _ could  _ have more, and yet he never quite managed it. It was always scraps. Good scraps, sure, but scraps nonetheless. He couldn’t even return to the Netherworld, not since Juno had completely exiled him for getting her discorperated by a Sandworm. He missed his little apartment, and his annoying neighbours, and- 

Well. That was it, actually, the Netherworld fucking sucked. It was still under Juno’s control, and after she’d lost her form momentarily, he could  _ feel  _ the tension emanating from it every time he opened a door to let some newlydead through. Breather Turf was all he had, and the only people who could see him there were those of the Deetz-Maitland household. 

He was  _ tolerated  _ there. That was the most, and the best, he figured he was ever going to get _.  _ So, he sits around, waiting to be tolerated some more, waiting for Lydia to call and ask him to watch some dumb movie with her or play Jenga again or something. Most of the time, she called for company while she went out taking photographs of dead things, because if Beetlejuice tried hard enough, his Guide abilities could lead him to the death of anything- bugs, critters, dreams, etc. Sure, those didn’t need doors drawn, but Lydia never seemed to care. 

“It’s the easiest way I can hang out with you without someone else in the house monitoring,” she’d explained the first time around, while taking a snapshot of a dead butterfly, already being torn apart by a myriad of ants. “They mean well. They’re all opening up to you, you know. That’s why they’re letting me hang around with you without supervision.” 

That was true. He could see it in Charles, who had finally and ultimately dropped the whole ‘Mr. Juice’ bullshit. To the breathers in the house, he had made it a rule to only go by  _ Beej,  _ because he could feel shivers and excitement travel down his spine (and some other places) whenever the name  _ Beetlejuice  _ was spoken out loud, and then extreme disappointment whenever it wasn’t spoken twice more, unbroken. It felt like a tease, one that did more to disappoint than excite (or arouse, for that matter) so he’d outlawed it entirely. Delia tended to mix it up between  _ Beej  _ and  _ BJ,  _ as did Lydia, though the teenager also added in some other unsavory but completely understandable nicknames from time to time. 

They were respecting his rules. He was, begrudgingly, respecting theirs. One of theirs was ‘no touching anybody without consent’ which was pointedly a reference to the Maitlands, so Beetlejuice had been making a point to avoid them altogether. It wasn’t that he couldn’t help himself, no, it was more a matter of them  _ literally being the only people who could actually touch him without him being summoned, the two cutest people he’d ever met, who he desperately wanted to kiss and hold both because they had the shiniest smiles and sweetest voices and because he was horny as hell and it was incredibly difficult to find wandering spirits willing to throw down in the Mortal Realm. _

He missed them and their lame, stupid faces. So, of course, he was avoiding them. The breathers had started to warm up to him, but he wasn’t giving the attic ghosts the chance to do the same. They’d just want him to make it up to them and then be  _ tolerable,  _ and he was always going to want more. To hold them and never let go, to twirl their hair around in his claws and listen to them giggle. The whole  _ consent  _ thing was a big deal, clearly, but the thing was that they’d  _ never  _ consent because they already had each other, and there was no way in any layer of Hell that they’d let a demon shoehorn his way in there. 

Not that he wanted to. Relationships weren’t his ‘thing.’ He’d never had one, and he’d never wanted one. Seeing what Barbara and Adam had together made his gut twist and pull, in a gross way, but also in a way that would change his hair color if he wasn’t careful. So, he was careful in the way that meant going nowhere near them for as long as he could manage without drawing suspicion. Other than for household ‘please let me stay here’s my apology’ hour, he’d hardly spoken a word to them. 

And now he sits, waiting for some chick to get run over by a prius because pretty soon she’ll cross the road without bothering to look up from her phone. He has to make an effort to affect his gravity so he can sit on the bench below him rather than fall through it. He flexes his hands out of boredom, picking at his skin, waiting for the stupid lady to die already so he can find something else to bother himself with. Being a Guide was way more boring than being a Bio-Exorcist, but eh, price paid and all that. Besides, if he left a newlydead unattended and out in the open, it was likely a sandworm would get to them first, and if not a sandworm then some other creature looking to eat newlydeads to make themselves stronger. He’s met a few like that, but none big enough to challenge him. 

His phone rings. He pulls it out, checks the time. 1:44 PM. On a Tuesday. Hmm. Wasn’t Lydia in school? He’d walked her there, once or twice, but she never let him onto the school grounds. He was able to see how rich it looked, the matching outfits of all the students that didn’t seem to suit anybody. Sure, he wouldn’t be surprised if she ditched that, but Charles and Delia, and likey Barbara and Adam as well, would likely have something to say about it. 

Curious, he answers, just as the woman he’d been sent to Guide goes flying. The sound of a car trying desperately to stop, brakes hit, and a man to his right shouting, “Watch out!” adds a typical dramatic atmosphere to a sudden death. The crunch doesn’t sound any better than the effect of skin hitting metal, either. 

The man screams, the car is still trying to stop, and Beetlejuice calmly says into the line, “Yellow.” 

It’s Barbara’s voice on the other end of the burner that scares him; “Beetlejuice? What was that sound? Are you- are you okay?” 

Beetlejuice nearly drops the phone. “Babs? What- ah, ya, just some lady died. What’s up?” 

The man is crying super loud, the individual that finally made their way out of their halted car is rushing over to the body shouting  _ Oh my God  _ and  _ No no no,  _ and it’s loud enough that it’s probably transferring through the phone, so Beetlejuice quickly makes a clone. “Watch the newlydead,” he instructs, and the clone salutes. 

He gets up and walks away from the squalor, and waits for a response, trying to look calm even though she can’t see him. He can’t go too far without his clone evaporating, and he didn’t necessarily trust his creations to do a good job of anything without supervision, so he stops a little ways away and twiddles his toes in the dirt that does not shift underneath his weight. 

Finally, Barbara says, “Oh… okay, well, um, if we’re keeping you-“ 

_ We.  _ Adam was there too? He bites down a groan. So much for avoiding them. “No, no it’s fine, what’s up?” 

“... Well, we wanted to know if you would like to spend some time with us. Delia and Charles are out at work, and Lydia has that field trip that-“ she’s saying, and come to think of it, Lydia had mentioned something of the sort- “so the house is empty. If you wanted to come over. As- as a friend, a friendly hang-out.” 

The last part feels unnecessary, really, and he pulls a face at it, grateful they can’t see. 

He thinks it over. He’d been avoiding them for a  _ reason,  _ and it would be incredibly easy to say the newlydead was going to take all of his focus. He’s tempted to, but a part of him hesitates. It was  _ them  _ offering for him to come over. ‘As a friend’, sure, like he knew how to do that. He rolls his eyes, but is still considering. 

If he messes up, he’ll lose the only interactions he’ll have for God/Satan knows how long before Juno finally lets him back into the Netherworld. If she ever does, that is. 

But he knows he can’t keep avoiding them forever. 

Heftily, he sighs. Well. It’s not like he had plans for today or anything. So, into the burner he’s certain Delia got to hide from the law or something, he says, “Ya, why not. Just let me scrape some woman in her late twenties off the pavement and I’ll pop over.” 

Silence, then the sound of the phone being shifted over. “Take your time,” says Adam, most likely the result of Barbara trying not to throw up and being unable to respond or something. He hangs up, stares blankly at the phone, and makes his way over to the scene again. 

The police haven’t arrived yet, but someone is on the phone, clearly awaiting their arrival. His clone is showing the newlydead, who is trying desperately to grab her phone from him, how to balance an android on his head. She looks pissed, like it’s more important to get it back than it is to recognize she’s just died and is talking to a demon in a striped suit. 

He sighs, chalk already in his hand. 

By the time he gets to the Maitland-Deetz household, it’s closer to 3 in the afternoon. The ghost had been stubborn, wouldn’t shut up about Instant Gram or something, had apparently live-streamed her death on accident. A good thing, then, that he wasn’t summoned at the moment- he’d likely be ‘trending’. That’s the last thing he needed, really. 

He lands in the living room, shouting, “Honeys! I’m home!” 

A quick shudder and a glance around tells him the ghosts are likely up in the attic, despite having the entire house to themselves. He rolls his eyes before realizing he’d landed directly over the spot where he died.

There’s no blood. He’d bled a lot, red blood, the first time his blood had ever been red. It had gone everywhere- out his mouth, out his chest, out his back. His hand navigates to the wound, brushing over his suit where the pointy end of bad art had stabbed him. Fuck, Lydia was  _ strong.  _ He got that his body wasn’t built with as much structure as a breather’s, but it must have still taken a lot of muscle to stab him in the back all the way out to the front. Adrenaline, maybe. Or maybe she was just secretly ripped for a fifteen year old. He pokes the hole that never quite closed up in his chest- nothing there, soft all around. Geeze, he was squishy. Maybe that’s really all it took. 

The carpet, somehow, was stain-free. He wonders idly how they managed that. He wishes he could have seen it- Charles, on his hands and knees, scrubbing up the scraps of a bad memory, a gift that just kept giving. Delia, replacing the couch he’d torn up. Lydia tidying. Barbara dusting, Adam sweeping. Teamwork. Family. 

Dead Beetlejuice guts, everywhere, bringing the family together. 

He hears a thump from upstairs. He blinks, and the living room is clean again, and he realizes he’s clenched his fists so tight his claws had dug into his palms. He blinks at the mess in his hands. Shit, wouldn’t it be counterproductive if he let the black liquid spill over the red? 

Two extra arms pull out of his sides and take care to wrap up his palms, just enough that they won’t mess up the carpets again. It stings, he realizes, but it’s not a bad feeling. It pulls him back to reality, and he licks up the trails that can’t be covered by the striped cloth now covering the minor wounds. The taste is citrusy. He licks his lips, then remembers why he came back to the house to begin with. 

Gingerly, he floats up the stairwell, then melds his head through the door to take a look at where everybody is. 

Adam is sitting on the couch, reading a novel (oh, to be able to hold things. Ghosts had it good). He tilts his head to see Barbara arranging some colorful vials on the table that Delia must have gotten them, because it was very purple. He whistles at their setup. New shelves, a fancy bed, Ikea-bought couches- the Deetzs must have splurged for them. 

Barbara and Adam startle at the sound of his whistle and look up just in time to see him enter, still looking around, letting the impression seep through. “Looks nice up here,” he comments. 

They both look relieved at the tame introduction. Tame, he could do tame. He wasn’t the best at it, and it wasn’t his first impulse by a long shot, but for them? Sure, call him a softie and die, but he’ll do what he must. 

“Beetlejuice, hello,” greets Barbara. To her credit, she sounds normal- not reserved or hesitant or downright disgusted by his being there. Odd, considering  _ everything,  _ but he’d roll with it. She was probably just being polite, tolerating him. She’d probably only asked him to come over because they needed something from him. They couldn’t leave the house without a sandworm getting them, after all, and Beetlejuice’s heritage (thanks, Pops) made him able to communicate with them. They’d never listen if he told them to back off of the Maitlands, but they’d listen if Beetlejuice asked to ride one of them into the household like a cowboy. Funny creatures, sandworms. 

Slinking into the attic, the demon hovers his way over to the table where she’d laid out the small vials. Adam puts down his book and asks, “How are you, then?” 

“Ah, invisible, banished, buttered, but the going is going and the goats keep bleatin’,” he answers, picking up a particular green shaded vial. It looked like something he’d seen on TV before, watched from some random breather’s house. You put it on your nails. He looks at his own- permanently coated black, sharper the sharper he felt. He holds it over to the ghosts, both at his side now. “Nail paint?” 

Barbara blinks dumbly, and Adam laughs. “No,” he says, “well. Yes, but it’s called ‘nail polish’. We were going to paint ours, later if you aren’t interested, but whenever if you are.” 

Barbara nods. She holds out her hands, paintless. “I already took my old coat off.” 

Beetlejuice raises an eyebrow. “You didn’t have a coat on when you died.” 

The Maitlands exchange glances. Both looked a mixture of amused and hesitant, to varying extents. Adam says, “you’ve never painted your nails before? We assumed you had, considering…” 

A vague hand gesture in his direction. Beetlejuice blinks dumbly, providing for him, “Mine are black?” 

He sags in relief and nods, thank God/Satan the demon was making it  _ easy  _ for him, right? Easy was shit, but Beetlejuice did have to be on his ‘best behaviour’ after all. So, smiling like a door greeter, he shows sharp teeth in the most polite way he can muster. He takes their flinches as a compliment. “Na. Born like that, babe.”

Barbara scrunches her face. Adam grabs her a little closer. “Can you… not do that?” 

“Do… oh, right. The ‘babe’ thing,” he realizes it’s one of the rules,  _ no sexualizing the Maitlands.  _ Calling them ‘babe’ hardly counted though, right? 

Judging by their looks of disapproval, it did. He sighs, holding up his hands. “Alright, alright, I’ll beat my ass with a belt later for that one. My bad.” 

The air doesn’t lose its tension, but it does subside as Adam nods, seeingly accepting the apology, and his wife settles down at the table. She could hover, just like Beetlejuice was doing, but it’s funny- she was making the active choice to walk and sit. To fix her own gravity based on pure determination to resemble breathers. Adam was doing the same thing, if he looked. Which was so goddamn weird, because seriously, what the fuck was the point of that? 

Barbara picks up the nail polish he’d put down, looks it over. A soft smile makes its way onto her lips. “This is a nice color. It matches how your hair looked when we first met.” 

That makes him feel worse. Fuck, what color was his hair  _ now?  _ Anxiously, he runs his hands through it, the practise of willing it back to green never quite mastered, though the attempt does make him feel a little better. After a moment, he grins sharply at them, deflecting. “So, what, y’all make a little circle jerk with a substitute of this stuff rather than proper lube? Or do you just,” he makes the motion of scribbling over his own nails. 

“The latter,” Adam deadpans. 

“Fun,” the demon responds unenthusiastically. 

“If you don’t want to, that’s okay,” Barbara hops in. “We can watch a movie or play a board game or something.” 

It feels like an invitation resending, and he scowls. For all the time he’d spend avoiding them, he didn’t want to  _ not  _ be with them, he just… knows his table manners aren’t up to par with the rules they’d set out for him. And he didn’t want to lose his chance to interact with the only people who could see him, which Charles had made clear would happen if he couldn’t follow through on  _ all  _ the rules. 

It would be smarter to leave now, before he fucked it all up and over. And yet… 

“No, it’s ah,” he sputters quickly, “sure. Yes, nails, whoo.” 

It seems to be good enough for the ghosts. They sit him down at the table, a wooden little thing, in between the two of them. Adam grabs at a light blue vial. “I wanna wear this one.” 

Barbara makes for a yellow one, closer to gold, really. She waggles it to indicate it’s for herself. 

Beetlejuice stares at the pile of colors. Some greens, some reds, some purples. He grabs an orange. “I guess red is nice.” 

“Oh, you’ll wanna grab a red then,” says Adam gently, pushing a few his way. 

He looks at the vial already in his hand. “This  _ is _ red.” 

“That’s, uh, orange.” 

He squints at it. It looks like blood to him. Whatever. With a shrug, he puts it down, grabs a different vial, though he can’t really judge what’s different about it. 

Barbara gives him a gentle look. “That’s pink, so. Close.” 

“What? How do you guys tell these apart, they all look so similar. Like, seriously, I love red, but there are so many reds here. Purple, too. Y’all need all these purples?” 

Baraba and Adam try to follow his line of sight. They each pick up a vial. 

“What color is this,” Baraba tries, gesturing to her hold. 

Beetlejuice scratches his chin, shifting his eyes between the two of them. Barbara watches with interest while Adam merely looks on from the side of his vision, clearly pretending not to be interested despite watching over the interaction. “Purple,” he says, after a moment. It looked pretty fuckin’ purple to him, anyway, as did majority of the vials spread out on the table, about seventeen-ish in total, not that he’d ever waste his time counting. Leave the math for kids like Lydia, right? 

“Turquoise,” Adam corrects, and the demon raises an eyebrow. After a moment, the ghost points at his own vial. “Do you think this is purple, too?” 

_ Duh,  _ he almost says, but he bites his tongue, knowing they could kick him out whenever they felt like. It feels like he’s being interrogated, or maybe made fun of, though their tones are gentle and the Maitlands are too nice for stuff like that. He’s aware of this, but still, he glares. “What's your problem?” 

“Oh! I don’t have one, sorry. Um, you might be a little colorblind there, Beetlejuice. Did you know that?” 

He rolls his eyes, trying hard to ignore the fact that he knew that truth blatantly well, for reasons he wasn’t looking forward to discussing. 

Those reasons being: he most certainly had seen far more colors than he knew ever existed in the brief 37 seconds he spent alive before bad art and an angry friend took it all away. Okay, sure that’s just  _ one  _ reason, but it was one hell of a can of worms he’d already sorta-kinda-basically worked out with Lydia already and he wasn’t planning on including the nosy attic residents in his little I-Fucking-Died-In-This-House pity-party. They asked him to come over to… what, paint their nails or something? As stupid as it sounded, they were including him. Even though he’d ignored them up until this point. Even though they should hate him, irregardless of his apology.

Adam hums. He looks over the vial in his hands, seemingly thinking. Maybe Beetlejuice just gave him a new revelation of life, or more applicably, death. He seemed far off, and in the quiet Barbara clears her throat, shaking her own golden shade. “Well,” she says with a cheer that just doesn’t fit. “Who’s first?” 

The demon leans on the table, grateful for the change in topic. “How do you guys usually do this?” 

“Well, I paint Adam nails, and then once his dry he does mine. We could do it that way- I’ll paint Adam’s nails, he’ll paint yours, and then you’ll paint mine. Or we could start with Adam?” 

This is the first three-way he’s ever negotiated that didn’t involve sex. It’s a little hard to wrap his head around, so he simply shrugs. Beside him, Adam hops out of his stupor and nods excitedly. “Sounds lovely, Hun.” 

As they get to it, Adam’s left hand rested in Barbara’s palm as she carefully applies a beautiful shade, Beetlejuice watches how she does it. She makes it look so easy. As she goes, she makes some notes about how to do the strokes and how to avoid skin, for when he’ll paint her nails. It’s boring as fuck, but it’s far more interesting than peeling dead people off the road and arguing with them until he can get them through a door he can’t even go through himself. It was also less boring than floating around a world that can’t see him, day after day and day. Being so close to Barbara and Adam, however, was far worse than being bored. 

Because he wanted to kiss them. And he wasn’t even allowed! Stupid rules. Stupid personal feelings. He wanted to tear their clothes off and hold them so, so close- and sure, he could get laid by his own clones whenever he felt like it, he got a  _ lot  _ more action when the Netherworld was open to him. There were always spectors out there that dug a bad boy, especially in places like that. And, well. The ability to summon extra hands never hurt anybody. 

The rules were baby talk to him, and it pissed him off beyond all measure.  _ No touching anybody without consent.  _ Sure, he’d certainly done that when he first met them, so it made sense that they felt the need to write it out. But he understood the meaning of  _ no _ . Sometimes he’d go too far and whoever he’d been after would give him a good slap and tell him off, and then they would go their separate ways. He knew, and God/Satan knows, how shitty it felt to have a ‘no’ ignored; he’d never pursue a lost cause, that just wasted his time and made everyone uncomfortable. And if Barbara and Adam made it a rule that he couldn’t do  _ anything  _ with them, then he wouldn’t, and the easiest way to do that was to just stay completely out of their way. 

That was a plan defenestrated, it seemed. Which made things  _ difficult,  _ but not unmanageable. He’d just jack-off later, or maybe get one of his clones to jack him off later, or all of them if he was feeling it. 

Barbara finishes off Adam’s nails, gushing about the color, and Beetlejuice pretends he hadn’t just zoned out for the entire last half of the task. “We’ll do a clear coat- one of these ones here- as soon as everyone has had the first coat of theirs done. We might have to do more than one for you, though,” the ghost hums, “with a white coat before we can add actual color, so it’ll hold better. How does that sound?” 

Her eyes were so pretty. “Sure,” he swallows. 

She smiles. Fuck, she _ knows _ she’s hot, the bastard. 

She finishes Adam’s hands, who waves them around sexily, waiting for them to dry. Fuck, he knows it too! Bastards, the both of them. “So, Beetlejuice. Look easy enough?” 

The demon scoffs. “Are you kidding? This is like, pre-school level shit.” 

“Yes, but it takes a lot of focus. It’s very easy to get some on the skin. Which is okay if it happens, of course, it's easy to clean off once it’s dried, but-” 

“It’s not the goal,” Barbara finishes sweetly. Adam nods. Beetlejuice rolls his eyes. 

After another few moments, Adam gently pokes at his own freshly painted nails. When none comes away on his finger, he excitedly exclaims, “My turn! Now, Beetlejuice, for you we’ll start with white before moving onto the actual color, just like we said before,” he says, gesturing at the color Beetlejuice had lamely grabbed at, the shade of sparkling green. “Is that okay?” 

He shrugs. Adam makes a gesture for his hand, and gently, Beetlejuice extends it. The striped fabric wrapped around it has turned more black than black-and-white striped, matching the shade his nails, vaguely claws, already are. Adam feels it, frowning, and Beetlejuice can’t help but stare. “What happened here?” he asks, voice softer than usual. Barbara watches, staring at the cloth with just as much interest. 

“Fought a bear,” he brags. 

“A bear,” Adam repeats. 

“Ya,” Beetlejuice pushes forward. “I won. He got some hits in, though.” 

Adam gives the cloth another gentle touch. “Do you want an actual bandage? This doesn’t look very sanitary.” 

Barbara is already up and grabbing a box from under their bookshelf. She returns with it, opening it up. Beetlejuice can’t see inside from where she’s facing, but the big red plus mark on the casing indicates it's a first aid kit, and he nearly laughs. “Uh- no, it’s fine. I can’t wear it, anyway, um-” he starts, but then realizes that, ya, he can. If the ghosts were the ones putting it on him,  _ they  _ could affect the Mortal Realm enough that he’d be able to wear it, so long as they put it on him. He hums, never having thought about it before because it had never come up. “Well. I could, I guess, but this is fine. The bleeding stopped, anyway. Mostly. I can’t die from blood loss, so I wouldn’t worry about it.” 

“Wait, the black stuff on it is…” Barbara starts, looking confused, “your blood?” 

He nods. Barbaba stares at his hands again, looking embarrassed for some reason, and he takes his hand back from Adam, who blinks dumbly at the sudden retraction. 

“Why don’t you do Bab’s nails first there, Adam,” he suggests, a little harsher than he’d meant to. The ghost exchanges glances with his wife, who closes up the first aid kit and places it at her feet. 

“Okay,” he accepts, shifting seats over to be closer within reach to her. She smiles apologetically at him, who looks a little dejected as he grabs for the shade she’d picked out for herself. 

Beetlejuice watches quietly as he grabs her hand the same as he’d grabbed his. It’s such a tender touch, he can still feel its impression on his skin, and on the fabric wrapping his wound. He immediately wants it back. 

Adam works quietly, humming some tune under his breath, as the nail polish is carefully and expertly applied. Beetlejuice doesn’t recognize the song, but he supposes it's better than the silence he’d imposed. Fuck, he’s not  _ good  _ at this. He doesn’t know how to be good at this. At least with Lydia, most of the talking is about her school, or the shows she picks out, or her family. Beetlejuice doesn’t talk much about himself around her because a lot of what might come out of his mouth would be skating on thin ice considering she was both a minor and he didn’t know what he was doing. He censored most of his stories, though she’d told him off for doing it before, and he figured if he told any now he’d have to continue the thread of censorship. They were sensitive, these guys- far more than Lydia. Anything he said around them would be ‘too much’. It was just a matter of time before they pulled the rug out from under him and sent him away again. 

Adam continues to hum. 

“Such a nice song,” Barbara sighs, leaning her uncoated hand on her chin. “Have you ever heard it, Beetlejuice?” 

He hasn’t, so he pops his  _ p  _ when he says, “Nope.” 

“It’s by the Beatles.” 

At that, he raises his eyebrow. “Oh ya? Not the Juices?” 

She laughs, and even Adam smiles. It's like a golden ticket. His posture loosens, just a little. “They’re an older band. Not very popular with the kids these days.” 

“At least, not with Lydia,” Adam adds, shivering for effect. “Her tastes are a bit more… hardcore.” 

Barbara giggles some more. “Oh, yes, very. It’s not terrible,” Adam pulls a face, soft but disagreeing, “It’s not! Just not our usual style. What sort of music do you like, Beetlejuice?” 

“Me?” he thinks. “Oh, I don’t care very much. Music is a lot of noise. I like singing, but my own shit, not the stuff you hear on ipods or whatever.” 

“Beetlejuice! You write music?” Adam gaps, Barbara’s hand momentarily forgotten before he goes back to finishing the last few strokes. The demon shrugs, but it doesn’t deter the ghost. “That’s incredible! You have to show us sometime.” 

“I… Sure. It passes the time,” he allows, looking between them. They look, well. Excited, maybe? He’s not sure what those expressions mean. He clears his throat. “I’ve never played to an audience that could hear me before. Except my mom, once, but she set my hands on fire to get me to stop, so I don’t play to her anymore.” 

Something awkward in the air shifts, but Beetlejuice powers through. “I don’t have a lot though. And they’re not very, ah, PG.” 

It takes a moment, but Barbara smiles. “We’d still love to hear some. And we’ll be more,” she waves her hand, clearly looking for a word. 

“Receptive,” Adam provides. Barbara nods. 

“-to your work. Pinky swear.” 

He grins. God, these two were so fucking adorable. There they were, opening their unbeating hearts to him. Was this what friendship with adults was like? Weird. 

Weird, but good. 

He nods, and the two of them look pleased. Barbara lifts her now dry hands. “Your turn, then?” 

He holds out his hands. This time, Adam takes his left, and Barbara his right. Their touches are so fucking  _ gentle,  _ especially around the cloth on each hand. Barbara starts with his right hand, applying a white coat over the natural black. When she finishes, she hands it to Adam, who does the same with his left. Once that dries, Barbara grabs for the sparkling green nail polish. She holds it up, just above his head. “See? It matches so nicely.” 

Adam’s eyes dart between them, comparing, and he agrees readily. 

The demon flushes. He’ll always want more. But for now? 

This was enough. 


End file.
